Tonight at Eastlands, Manchester City take on Tottenham in what may well be the decisive game in the race for fourth place and the final Champions League spot. The media have worked themselves up into a proper frenzy, but does it much matter?

The last couple of days must have been filled with conflicting emotions for Gunnar Nielsen. The twenty-three year old Faroese goalkeeper became the first person from his home island to play Premier League football...

Wayne Bridge probably won’t be going to the World Cup finals, then, but John Terry’s “friends” leaking derogatory comments to the press about him say more about Terry than they do about Bridge – namely, that he is a wretch.

The tabloid circus seems likely to continue to run for a few more days at least. Meanwhile, the rest of us look on at it all and shake our heads. Sometimes, it simply feels that if football wants our respect and our patronage, it has a funny way of showing it.

There are so many threads to tie together with this match that it is almost impossible to keep track of them all and the feeling, for the first time in a decade and a half, that Manchester United’s place at or about the top of the table may not be as perpetual as we had all thought, is certainly on the rise.

History, it has been said many times, is written by the victors. It’s a thought that may pass through the heads of some older Manchester City supporters during their League Cup semi-final against Manchester United at The City of Manchester Stadium this evening.

2009 was the year in which the wheels constantly threatened to come completely off football’s financial wagon without actually doing so. Mark Murphy takes a look over the great and good of the last twelve months and wonders how they – almost – all managed to get away with it.

As the Premier League reaches the half-way point in its season, Mark Siglioccolo takes a look into his crystal ball and wonders whether the days of Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea might be coming to an end. Who, though, will have the nerve to stare them out?

Manchester City have sacked Les Hughes, then, and replaced him with Roberto Mancini. Is this the wrong decision at the wrong time, or have their owners identified a problem at the club that is not immediately visible to the outside world? We shall see – and probably not until it’s too late.

Arsenal were brushed aside by Chelsea at the weekend, and this evening they were similarly dismissed by Manchester City. With the Premier League drifting away towards the horizon, is patience wth Arsene Wenger starting to run out, or are Arsenal supporters getting used to what could be a new world order?

Hyde United supporters will be outside the City of Manchester Stadium for tonight’s Premier League match between Manchester City and West Ham United, collecting to stave off the winding up order brought against them by HMRC.

When Manchester City played Gillingham in the Division Two play-off final in 1999, it felt as if it was a do or die moment for the blue half of Manchester. They pulled through, and now they’re one of the richest clubs in the world.

Arsenal’s trip to Manchester City on Saturday was always likely to be a potential tinderbox. City are the arrivistes, the newly-minted money and Arsenal are the team whose Champions League place they are most...